How do we communicate?

MypinchofItaly said:
Yesterday someone has posted on a fb group a pic about a billboard with this adv sentence to promote their products (unknown):
" Maybe the best way to relax", with a big drawed arrow to follow.
The most popular comments were "what a genious!" (Ironically) or "not a good idea" or even "failed marketing" or " if you are not sure about what you sell"... the focus was on the Maybe word. But honestly this adv has intrigued me, giving me a nice sensation. I think they wanted to play with words, unconventionally. What do you think of it? Failed or success? Curiousity or to ignore?
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Don't know - can you post the image?

This one is quite clever:

4af5abf278edf6ced5cd782c22119715--product-advertising-advertising-ideas.jpg
 
I'm also fascinated by regional accents.
Duck59 said:
One family lived in the town of Swindon, in Wiltshire. They were amazed at how rural and West Country the accent of their forebear sounded. Their own accents were somewhat closer to the mix of rural and estuary Oxford accent I described above (Swindon is quite near Oxford). There were similar instances with other people featured in the programme.
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Interesting. My Dad (born 1912) grew up in Tetbury and Swindon and he and all the family had very broad rural accents. My mother grew up in Portsmouth and had a Hampshire accent which shares a lot of characteristics. I used to speak rather like both of them but it sadly got lost in University and I fear I now speak estuary English although it has been pointed out to me that I say some words in a weird way!
 
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Long before cell phone cameras I was driving to a meeting through a very rural area. I saw a sign that nearly sent me off of the road.

MAYPOPS
Good Used Tires.
Cheap!
 
That reminds me of when one of my friends came to visit. I was still living with Mum and Dad at the time. I had to pop out for a while but, because she was tired after the train journey, she volunteered to stay at home with my Mum. She panicked because she could not understand a word my mother said. The same thing happened to me when I went to visit her in Austria. It never occurred to me that Austrian German is slightly different from that spoken in Germany, or that the Salzburg accent would be different, especially in the [the] rural place they lived.

When I first lived in Germany, Mum and Dad came with me to keep me company on the long drive to Stuttgart. I had a place to stay in a small village where most of the people normally spoke Schwäbisch - entirely different from German. Mum and Dad could understand more than I could, and there whole lives they had only spoken English.

When I first went to Greece, I couldn't speak Greek at all, but spent quite an educational afternoon reading the newspaper to an old lady whose eyesight was failing. Although the alphabets are not the same, learning a bit of Russian helped enormously.

@morning glory In my younger days I had a boyfriend who came from Tetbury. Lovely accent. :D
 
morning glory said:
I'm also fascinated by regional accents.


Interesting. My Dad (born 1912) grew up in Tetbury and Swindon and he and all the family had very broad rural accents. My mother grew up in Portsmouth and had a Hampshire accent which shares a lot of characteristics. I used to speak rather like both of them but it sadly got lost in University and I fear I now speak estuary English although it has been pointed out to me that I say some words in a weird way!
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I have a friend (same age as me) who is a native of Reading. His father, who spent his whole life in the town, had a distinctly rural burr to his accent. In fact, the way he spoke was not too dissimilar to the cricket commentator John Arlott, who came from nearby Basingstoke. I suspect there are not too many Reading natives that speak like that any more. The town's proximity to London has probably eradicated this kind of accent.
 
Duck59 said:
I have a friend (same age as me) who is a native of Reading. His father, who spent his whole life in the town, had a distinctly rural burr to his accent. In fact, the way he spoke was not too dissimilar to the cricket commentator John Arlott, who came from nearby Basingstoke. I suspect there are not too many Reading natives that speak like that any more. The town's proximity to London has probably eradicated this kind of accent.
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Its sad but I think in a hundred years time there will be little left of regional British accents except in the far North, perhaps.
 
One thing that we seem to get a lot of, possibly due to the plethora of Australian soap operas on British TV, is the "upward inflection" at the end of a sentence, whereby it sounds like people are asking a question when they are not.
 
Duck59 said:
One thing that we seem to get a lot of, possibly due to the plethora of Australian soap operas on British TV, is the "upward inflection" at the end of a sentence, whereby it sounds like people are asking a question when they are not.
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That is seriously irritating. I notice a lot of young women speak in that way. I heard something a while back on the radio about this. It is thought to be a sign of submission (non assertive). The apparent questioning of a statement by using an upward inflection implying that 'I may not be right' and seeking assurance from the listener.
 
Duck59 said:
One that gets my goat - who is a pretty tetchy fellow - is when people answer a question with "Yeah, no" or "No, yeah." What is that about?
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I can't stand when people answer to the question "how are you?"
with "enough" (abbastanza)
Enough what? (abbastanza cosa?)
Or even during a speech "....cioè nel senso, no ?...." - "I.e. in the sense, not?..."
 
morning glory said:
Its sad but I think in a hundred years time there will be little left of regional British accents except in the far North, perhaps.
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We'll still be wanging things about up here.
MypinchofItaly said:
I can't stand when people answer to the question "how are you?"
with "enough" (abbastanza)
Enough what? (abbastanza cosa?)
Or even during a speech "....cioè nel senso, no ?...." - "I.e. in the sense, not?..."
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Nobbutfairtomiddlin
 
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